Jennifer Morales

Jennifer Morales represents the fifth school board district, stretching from the East Side to the near South Side. For most of her term it appears that the school board has been her only employment, reflected in her comments during the board pay hike controversy: "It's very hard to hold another job while we're doing this work." However, she is currently listed as Development Director for 9to5.

Prior to joining the board, Morales worked for Alex Molnar at UWM. Her primary role there seems to have been compiling examples for an annual survey of commercialization in education. While Morales describes herself as an educational researcher, it appears she has little experience with measuring educational effectiveness and has been particularly hostile to using tests to measure student learning. When Molnar moved to Arizona, he took the commercialization center and its grants along with him and Morales' job ended.

Prior to the Molnar gig, she wrote several articles for Rethinking Schools:
"Apple Tries to Censor History"
"Buying Minds"
"Fasting for Funding"
"Massachusetts Policy Protects Gay/Lesbian Students"
"Really Rich White Guys"
"Sex Harassment Rampant in Schools"
"School to War?"
"Wisconsin Explores Funding Alternatives"
Since those articles predate the time Rethinking Schools was placed on the web, they are not easily accessible. Judging from the topics, however, it appears evident that her themes were typical of Rethinking Schools.

Despite this background in education, Morales has been surprisingly unclear as to her vision for MPS. She has expressed reservations about many of the MPS initiatives (neighborhood schools, decentralization of funding, testing, reduction of busing, etc.), but has usually acquiesced in the end. A theme both in her election campaign and since is the need for more funding, but she has not shown a viable strategy to obtain it.

While on the board, much of her energy seems to have been devoted to issues peripheral to education (bus driver contracts or the radio station), external to MPS (opposition to vouchers), or outside of education entirely (opposition to the Iraq war, support of grocery unions). She has been particularly active as a spokesperson for groups opposing vouchers.

In the view of some of her colleagues, the explosion of outrage over the board pay raise she supported and then-mayoral candidate Tom Barrett's proposal to have the mayor appoint the board shocked Morales. As a result, she has recently adopted a more moderate, and less strident and ideological tone, breaking with her ally Peter Blewett by supporting renewal of the superintendent's contract and supporting his budget proposal.

Recently, she is emerging as a Democratic Party activist. She was a delegate to the Democratic convention in Boston. She is currently running as a Democrat against Senator Alberta Darling on the North Shore. While it appears she has little chance of winning (she has little money and if the party thought it had a good chance of winning the seat it is likely they would have recruited a more moderate candidate with a better chance of appealing to independents), this race should seal her Democratic party identity.

It appears Morales is a good bet to win reelection in the fifth district, even if her interests are less in how to make MPS more effective than the traditional liberal issues played out in the legislature. As a woman, Hispanic, and "out-bisexual," she hits the trifecta of identity politics important to many in the district. Particularly if Bush is re-elected, stoking anger among Democrats, her emergence as a Democratic activist should play well in the district.